Adults who were home schooled talk to me please

[Nigglenaggle]

What did you like and dislike about it? If you later went back to school was that hard? Do you feel you would have done better or worse in life at school? Would you do the same for your children? Trying to decide what to do for ours

On the subject of home education making children "different", I read an inspiring book about the self-image of home educated teenaged girls: www.amazon.co.uk/Sense-Self-Listening-Homeschooled-Adolescent/dp/0867094052

The author's account of her discussions with HE teen girls rang true to my observations of my own 14yo daughter and her older HE friends. They are comfortable with who they are, and become even more so as they grow from childhood into womanhood. This seems a positive thing to me.

It isn't that they are different for the sake of being different, or because they are unable to conform. It's that (like most adults in our society, but unlike many teens) they don't feel a strong need to disguise whatever differences already exist between their own identity and an idealised image to which they are "supposed" to aspire.

In similar vein, Robert Epstein argues that the phenomenon of the turbulent teenaged years is due partly to the segregation of adolescents away from the wider society (in schools, for example). He observes that in preindustrialised societies there is no expectation that adolescents will feel a sense of alienation, or that teens are fundamentally different from other people in their culture. drrobertepstein.com/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf

On the subject of the teacher/parent bit.......I am a teacher & I home educate my kids. To begin with I had this exact issue with my daughter and when I tried to teach something, she would literally sit with her back to me. Over time I realised that I wasn't working 'with' them but was trying to 'teach' them in that 'filling empty vessels' kind of way. All the years of teaching, it was hard not to do but these days though we still have some structure to our home ed, I feel myself and my kids are in partnership. I totally follow their individual development & try to honour their needs. I don't feel like their teacher and they don't see me that way. I am being their parent & guiding them & trying to ensure they reach their potential, but I'm doing that in what feels like a very natural way. I am their parent in all that we do, there is not a huge section of their lives (their education) which I am delegating to some one else. Its a team thing:)

Guess we are mostly done but just giving a gentle bump to say that anyone new is welcome to add to the thread

please keep the comments comig